In a type of flat knitting machine, a movable yarn guide moves along a yarn guide rail, and guides a yarn fed to a yarn carrier. The movable yarn guide is required when the needle bed is long. The movable yarn guide is provided at a position between an end of the yarn guide rail and the yarn carrier for guiding the yarn supplied from a fixed yarn guide to the yarn carrier at a middle position between the fixed yarn guide and the yarn carrier. Thus, slack or swing of the yarn is prevented, and entanglement of yarns is prevented.
According to the disclosure of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 58-126351, a pair of left and right movable yarn guides are connected together, and a yarn carrier provided between the movable yarn guides are freely movable without interference with coupling means of the movable yarn guides. When the yarn carrier contacts the movable yarn guide, the yarn carrier pushes, and moves the movable yarn guide. Further, according to the disclosure of Japanese Patent No. 2857840, a movable yarn guide accompanies a yarn carrier.
In the case of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 58-126351, the movable yarn guides are not always kept at the desired positions. For example, when the yarn carrier pushes the movable yarn guide, the distance between the yarn carrier and one of the movable yarn guides is too small, and the distance between the yarn carrier and the other of the movable yarn guides is too large. Further, until the yarn carrier contacts the movable yarn guide, though the movable yarn guides are positioned at substantially suitable positions, these positions are not always the optimum positions. For example, assuming that the distance between the pair of movable yarn guides is ½ of the needle bed length, the distances between the movable yarn guides and the yarn carrier fall within the range of 0 to ½ of the needle bed length. However, the range is too wide, and cannot be said as the suitable range. In the case of Japanese Patent No. 2857840, while the yarn carrier accompanies the movable yarn guide, the distance between the yarn carrier and the movable yarn guide is too small. Therefore, it is not possible to accompany the movable yarn guide with the yarn carrier, and perform knitting at the same time. Thus, it is necessary to move the yarn carrier and the carriage only for accompanying the movable yarn guide with the yarn carrier.